A multi-disciplinary course taught by Anne Dalke and Laura Blankenship

On Labels

2009 February 8

by Hillary

I also have some reservations and frustrations with the Sandy Stone article and her deffinitons that she uses and quotes. That made me realize that I have some issues with labels. Well not people giving themselves labels, but other people needing labels when someone doesn’t provide them or don’t easily fit into the person’s labels. I like having a label for myself, but i know that the label I choose doesn’t work for everyone that is “like” me. I realize that I get very frustrated and sometimes angry when people are closeminded about what is out there. You don’t have to understand why people are the way that they are but I feel like people need to be open to and accept the idea that they won’t fully understand everyone they meet. I have many friends with many different “labels” for themselves and I love and accept them all for whoever they are. I didn’t always understand at first, but I knew that eventualy I might, and that I would never understand until I accepted them. Everyone is guilty of steriotyping people we see every day (myself deffinetly included), I think the mark of the progress of a society or comunity is our ablity to acknowledge that this happens and them move on to acceptence. Queer Eye did an episode for a trans-guy in NYC, and they way they ended the episode always made me very happy. In the section at the very end of the show they usually reserve for tips they talk about tolerance vs. acceptance. Jai: “You tolerate Mondays, but people should be accepted”.

Hahaha, I loved those Queer Eye guys. That’s a great quote and a good point, too, that people feel they need to label themselves so other people won’t be uncomfortable. I think it was Angela Davis who was talking about how if we are introduced to someone whose appearance doesn’t match up with a clear-cut racial group, we feel ill at ease until we find out how that person identifies. I know I do this too, but I think being very aware of it is the best way to train yourself not to rely so much on labels.